Oculus Canceling Second-Hand Seller Pre-Orders

To say Oculus' virtual reality headsets have been popular would be a vast understatement. With the second iteration of the development kit finally on its way to customers now, those still awaiting pre-orders won't have long to wait now. Of course, there are some people who pre-ordered solely to resell the promise of an Oculus Rift to those who missed out on a chance of their own. Oculus isn't so happy about it.

About 45,000 people pre-ordered round two of Oculus' headset, with the first 25 percent or so heading out to those customers now. If you missed out, you'll be waiting quite a while to get your hands on your own $350 virtual reality device. Of course, there are still 30,000 some pre-orders waiting to be filled, and maybe you might be able to get your hands on one of those? Not so fast.

According to TechCrunch, Oculus is working hard to ensure that anyone who pre-ordered a VR headset with the express purpose of reselling it at a profit will have said pre-order canceled entirely. As the headset is currently meant to be used as a means of development only at this point, and is technically not for consumers, the resale calls into question the motives of the original buyer. While Oculus doesn't specifically screen each and every person who pre-orders, everyone who buys one must acknowledge that it's not meant for consumer markets.

Some patient customers expressed concern information that was shared with one another to help establish a potential shipping timeline might cause them to be framed for reselling on other outlets. However, Oculus responded, saying, "Just so everyone is clear, the information provided alone was not enough to take action. We perform our own investigations with tools at our disposal to make sure that there isn’t a false positive.

"Our community is awesome! Thank you for helping us make sure that we are getting kits into the hands of devs and shutting down profiteers."

While there's still no timetable for when the rest of the Oculus dev kits will be shipping, at least the company appears to be keeping over-priced resales in check. At least for now.